Mersey and Dee YAC celebrate World Heritage Day

The Mersey and Dee YAC branch celebrated World Heritage Day by working with a local charity called Lister Steps to help them develop ideas for reusing the Grade II listed former Andrew Carnegie Library. The library was built in 1903 using a grant by Andrew Carnegie. It was designed by Thomas Shelmerdine and opened in 1905. Sadly the library closed in 2006 due to health and safety concerns and has remained empty ever since. Lister Steps, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, will create a ‘community hub’ of facilities, services and activities in the former library.

The workshop started by discussing ‘What is Heritage?’ and learning about the ‘Heritage at Risk Register’ and ‘Constructive Conservation’ before looking at some examples of ‘Constructive Conservation’ in Liverpool.

Design teams

We then split into three design teams; Falcons, Creative Designs 3 (CD3) and Sky High. We worked together to come up with suggestions for how Lister Steps could re-use the library building. To illustrate our ideas we built models, drew floor plans and created an interactive presentation. We presented our ideas to the group and discussed if the ideas followed Historic England's 'Constructive Conservation' principles and if they were suitable for Lister Steps to deliver.

The teams came up with the following ideas and suggestions:

Sky High: Developing the building to become a 'Superhero Centre' including activities such as; a charity shop, a museum, nursery, meeting rooms, library, canteen, a playground and a Lego room all following the rule of 'no bullying'.

Falcons: Developing the building to become a 'Museum of Filmmaking' with a cafe, nursery, art area, vintage cinema and a history of film room. The group also considered adding a first floor, including an accessible lift and facilities and fire exits.

CD3: Developing the building to become a 'Sci-fi Centre' including running events like Comic-Con, having a giant slide, a hot tub, Dungeons and Dragons, ghost tours, a community bank and lots of play areas with modern technology to play video games.

We worked hard to create unique and interesting designs whilst respecting the heritage of the building. Lister Steps were impressed with the level of detail in each design and hope to include some suggestions in the final plans such as a cafe, meeting rooms, a community bank, a playground and Lego!

Blog by Kerry Massheder-Rigby, Mersey and Dee YAC

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